Easter

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!
Celebrating the 50 days of Eastertide.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:4 ESV

The Feast at the Center of the YearBehold, I am making all things new! Revelation 21:5

The Feast of Easter is the Feast in the church’s year; and thus the Feast in the Story of the World. But how are we to understand this day? What is it that we are to celebrate this day and this Easter Season? Odo Casel, the noted liturgical scholar, summarizes what the earliest Christians believed about this day:

The Feast of Easter is the cultic proclamation and representation of the redemptive action which Christ accomplished in his death and glorification, namely, the conquest of sin through the cross and thereby the reconciliation of the human race to God; but thereby too the establishment of the Church, which is redeemed by the blood of Christ and wedded to her Bridegroom by the Spirit of the Lord. Consequently, Easter is also the sacramental passage from the world to the life of God, or of the entry of the redeemed human race into the kingdom of God and everlasting life with God.

In short, Easter is the cultic mystery of the saving work which God accomplished in Christ on behalf of the Church. Easter is therefore rightly regarded as the Feast at the center of the year, which symbolizes the world-year, the latter in its turn being a created image of God’s eternity.

There is so much to celebrate that we will spend the next 50 days doing so.

For Christ, our paschal lamb has been sacrificed! Let us, therefore, celebrate the feast! Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’
1 Corinthians 5:7-8